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Koreantoast writes "After failing on numerous occasions, North Korea has finally put a satellite in orbit. But according to US officials, it is now 'tumbling out of control.' This is bad news, and more bad news, covered in a double layer of extra bad news. From the article: 'According to US officials, it appears that North Korea's new satellite has failed to achieve a stable orbit and is now "tumbling out of control." The greatest danger is the threat of it colliding with another satellite, adding to the growing debris field around the earth.' A separate Gizmodo article provides links for tracking the current location of the satellite."

small rocket + net + parachute. Navy waiting underneath. Hell, put a GPS transmitter and flotation in the package and you could pretty much bring anything out of orbit you wanted to as long as it didn't have its own propulsion.

Exactly a nuke isn't gonna be worth much if you can't even hit within 20 miles of your target, especially since what i read on their nuke tests had the thing about a little over half the Hiroshima bomb. So with a nuke that weak (as far as nukes go) you are not only gonna have to have a delivery system accurate enough to get within a couple of miles of the target but you're also gonna have to be able to get it to burst at just the right height for maximum damage.

But from the looks of things what we have here is similar to what a lot of third world dictatorships have tried to do, and that is take the old Scud designs and just make it bigger with more stages. Problem is the Scud was basically a rocket artillery system, it just wasn't ever designed for long range accuracy because that is what the Soviets had the ICBMs for, but of course they didn't export their ICBMs (that I know of, could be wrong) so all these different countries, Iraq, Iran, NK, built around the Scud because that is what they could get their hands on.

So I really think this is a combo of weenie waving and insurance, weenie waving so they don't look as weak as they actually are and insurance to keep someone like the UN, China, or the USA from deciding that regime change is in order. All that will end up coming of this is they'll end up getting some more aid to prop them up awhile longer and when that runs out you'll have another weenie waving event to remind the world they are still there and to get another aid check.

But we have yet to see them have a 100% successful test of their rockets and from what we have seen these things couldn't hit a barn the size of Kansas, much less target the USA with the thing. Hell I'd be more worried about the damned thing blowing up over NK and having radiation spread all over the Korean peninsula than I would be them actually being able to target a US city, they just don't seem to have the expertise.

Exactly a nuke isn't gonna be worth much if you can't even hit within 20 miles of your target, especially since what i read on their nuke tests had the thing about a little over half the Hiroshima bomb.

In a tactical sense that's true, but even with poor accuracy you wouldn't want one headed towards your country. The purpose of having ICBMs is not to use them, it is to deter the other guy from using them. Having lots is more important than having accuracy.

I doubt they can. It's not hard to capture a drifting object, but if it's actually "out of control" (fired a thruster until it obtained an energetic spin), then they'd have more work to do than just send up a shuttle with grappling arm.

Assuming it's tumbling out of control, it has a predictable orbit and safe distance. Could they not maneuver the X-37B close to it with the main engine pointed towards the satellite (oriented in the direction opposite of the orbit), and fire the thruster, slowing down the satellite and hastening re-entry?

This is assuming the primary concern is that it shouldn't hit anything before re-entering, not the re-entry itself. After all, a random re-entry has incredibly low chances of doing any damage, while an in-orbit collision is pretty disastrous in terms of debris.

I would imagine that the X-37B would have to consume a great deal of fuel just to reach and match orbits with the satellite, if it were even possible.

Then again, if you were an out of control insane nation run by psychopaths and wanted to test an anti-satellite satellite against a real target, you would want to make sure it appeared like it was out of control too. Then it's all whoops, tee hee and pay me much money not to launch another one.

This is North Korea we're talking about. The level of incompetence they have displayed, repeatedly and publicly, is difficult to overstate. Quite frankly, botching their first attempt at a satellite launch (something the Soviet Union got right on their first try in 1957) is small potatoes compared to some of their other attempted shenanigans.

Among other things, the tallest structure in the country (a would-be hotel in the capital) was started in 1987, was originally intended to be completed by mid 1989 for some locally important event or another, and at this time is still not ready for use. They're currently hoping to _partially_ open the still-incomplete building in 2013, although one wonders where they think they're going to find enough tourists to fill a hundred-story hotel, even if they do ever finish it.

(Lonely Planet's writeup of the country is interestingly clever, particularly the way it manages to put excessive positive spin on things and yet still not make the country sound like an even remotely interesting tourist destination. The only landmark attraction they specifically mention is a mountain, which they call "one of the most stunning sights in North Korea", although they do also claim that the capital city has "a few sites worth visiting".)

Nobody in the Dilbert comic strip has ever approached North Korea's level of incompetence.

Our leaders aren't psychopaths...they are sociopaths, there is a difference you know. Psychopaths will do things that aren't in their best interests whereas with American politicians no matter who ELSE has to get screwed they are getting the money and the book deal, count on it.

Neither the "mini-shuttle" nor the retired shuttles are in a position to reach the orbit of the NK satellite. It is in a sun-synchronous orbit, which means its orbital inclination is near-polar. The current OTV-3 (mission name of the so-called mini-shuttle) is in an orbit of around 40 degrees, which makes it incapable of reaching the NK satellite's inclination, and no space shuttle ever flew in a polar orbit and nor had any plans/capability to do so after the Challenger accident.

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen someone propose that two satellites get together in orbit when such a thing is practically impossible, I'd be hundreds of dollars richer...

There's "decent" and then there's "shitloads" required to move from an equatorial orbit to polar. You can try it out with a yo-yo (do they still make them?) spinning horizontally at waist height and then move it so it's spinning vertically to get some idea of how much force you've got to put in. To sum up, if it's not designed to do such a thing it won't have all the extra fuel capacity to do so, because even empty tanks are heavy.

if the size of whatever we blow up the satellite with is less than the satellite it is likely to hit, then you would have less debris blowing it up. Also I would think the resulting debris field would be more contained. If it was from 2 high-speed large satellites they may wound each other enough to then have large obstacles aiming at more satellites...

We're just clueless pikers and you geniuses north of us are obviously our superiors in every way. Thank god for Canada, or we'd all be lost. It's called throwing you a bone, the least you could do is show gratitude instead of acting like you lot actually did something, because you didn't.

For failing to comprehend the True Cosmological Glory that is Canada, you are hereby sentenced to be (appropriately enough) torn limb from limb by the newest Canadian space-robot, Dextre the Magnificent [nasa.gov].

On the other hand, pig yankee capitalist and pig red commie swine had more than one fiery death terror satellite wobbling in many orbits in the past before they forgot the art and became incapable of maintaining more than one orbit per satellite.

...it can cover multiple orbital trajectories while imperialist pig Yankee capitalist satellites are only capable of a single orbit.

Our spy satellites can cover multiple orbital trajectories too, and without exploding a few weeks after launch or burning up in the atmosphere. Oh, and you might want to get that mole on your back looked at; Our intelligence analysts think it might be cancerous. Or not. We're just saying, after spending so much money on surveillance watching your every move, it'd be a shame to waste the investment. By the way, kudos on your launch. No really, we mean that -- we're really impressed you can do that when most

NK officials told to press they are pretty satisfied with the result given their reserves of Diet Coke and Mentos, the result is way better than expected. They still have enough Diet Coke and Mentos for another launch before the end of the year.

I don't understand what the problem is? Shooting satellites into space and keeping them in orbit has been a solved problem for decades.
North Korea should be able to do this. Rocket and satellite tech isn't that secret anymore. It's only a matter of engineering and money. They surely have the engineers and they have shown they can scrape together the money at the expense of their own people.

IIRC there are less than 15 nations who have the capability to launch a satellite and none of them achieved it entirely on their own. Knowing how to build an ICBM is quite different to actually building one, there's a whole host of prerequisite technologies that you need, a huge problem when you're an impoverished hermit nation.

If you're in orbit, you're in orbit. If your orbit is too low then it's a decaying orbit but "tumbling out of control" is a bit of hyperbole from the press. It might be harder to predict the re-entry if the satellite is spinning and has no attitude control; maybe that's what they mean. I suppose it's possible that it could strike that atmosphere and bounce before re-entering, but will it bounce high enough to impact something in LEO? Details please. I bet this is a tempest in a teapot; not that I condone NK's actions or think they're particularly smart.

I would have to say "the greatest danger is the threat of it colliding with another satellite, adding to the growing debris field around the earth" is another fine example of that hyperbole. I mean, it's probably technically true. The odds may be infinitesimal, but still higher than the odds of any other danger.

[you posit that its hyperbolic to say there is a risk of satellite collisions] "I mean, it's probably technically true The odds may be infinitesimal, but still higher than the odds of any other danger."

The article is quoting "US officials" when describing it as tumbling. If the satellite is spinning around more than one axis, then tumbling is the appropriate description, and is strong evidence that it is not under control.

Picture a spinning top, if the axis is no absolutely vertical the axis itself will "spin" around a different axis, the point where both axis intersect is where the top is touching the floor. The second axis does not pass through the top, it is at a tangent to the floor end of the tops primary spin axis. I believe it what's known as "procession" and that the Earth also displays the phenomena, but I'm too lazy to google it. If you never had a gyroscope as a kid go out and get one, they are just as "miraculous

It's bad reporting. "tumbling out of control" usually means "requires directional stability to get power from the sun, and it's tumbling too fast to get sun on the panels long enough to generate useful current." Or "physical problem with thruster applied unintended thrust, resulting in an unintended spin." But there's nothing that would have a satellite traveling in anything other than a normal orbit, which is what this article is implying. It's highly unlikely it has enough fuel to cross multiple orbit

Tumbling out of control also means any directional antennae are useless. If you intend sending commands to the satellite though such an antenna then you might not be able to recover the ability to control the satellite.

The North Korean people aren't just hungry, they are starving en-masse. And the leadership is all into putting its tiny foreign earnings into dick swinging activities like this (achieving what Russia and the US did decades ago). The DPRK really is the most criminal and totalitarian regime out there.

It's also doing a fantastic job of brainwashing their people. Lots of them blame the Western world for their problems. There was a NPR story years back where an embed noted that if there's a power outage, the typical reaction from people is to blame it on some anti-infrastructure American campaign. I've always said that dictators are the highest form of politician because they've got to maintain an iron grip on power with nothing as helpful as royal blood or divine right to keep the people on their sid

Interesting. I heard that a Westerner who went through Pyongyang was surprised to see US flags *everywhere*. You see, the food aid extorted from the US comes in large sacks that have US flags stamped on them. When the food is used the sacks get re-purposed for lots of things, like makeshift materials (eg, awnings, window blinds etc). Hence, the North Korean certainly understand where the food is coming from. The official line might be continuous revolution and the evil West, but I doubt the West is hated more than their government (if it wasn't for ruthless armed guards the people would flee - that speaks volumes about what the people think about their 'Workers Paradise').

It may not be flat out stupidity. Perhaps it is a matter of not having the data required to make the appropriate calculations. We know everything in orbit, gravitational tug well beyond 20 decimal places on all faces of the earth. Just a couple of those missing variables could really make physics not work how you predict

Or, it was designed to be a simple parabolic missile, but NK test firing a missile is banned by the UN, so they pack in enough fuel to get to orbit, any kind of orbit, and there was never a plan to make it a stable orbit nor were there thursters on board to do so. In other words, a missile test disguised as a orbital launch.

You think North Korea cares about the UN? The UN can't agree that the Syrian government should be sanctioned. For launching a missile, the UN might decide to write a weakly worded statement that future misbehaving might incur a more strongly worded letter. Maybe. After weeks of negotiations and diplomacy.

The UN in general/can/ agree on Syria, it's just that Russia and China have their vetoes on the Security Council and used them to protect the Assad regime. Why? My theory is geopolitics: Russia is trying to keep a friendly government near its southwestern flank and head off US/NATO gains in the region, and possibly they're trying to keep Islamists off said flank lest the plague spread into their territory.

China's just wanting to cock-block us so we don't get too powerful, and maybe they've got some lucrative trade going on, or would like to.

I liked that theory at first, but then I took a look at the orbital parameters... It seems to be almost pefect sun-synchronous orbit. Public experts where holding reaching sun-synchronous orbit out of reach impossibility for NK given the need to launch it at such an angle as not to have spent stages fall on ground where they could be construed a hostile action.

I'm sure we'll hear more on this in the coming hours, but it looks to me like they must've spent a lot of effort and risk on reaching sun-synchronous orbit (one conductive for earth-observation, such as spy or weather-satellites which NK claimed it would be). It doesn't seem credible that they would've done that just for a ballistic missile test and dummy payload. Also something about the way most news-sources quote the "tumbling out of control" seems to give up the impression they believe it initially had attitude control, though to be honest I'm curious to hear how they would determine when it had or didn't have attitue control.

If it does end up damaging another satellite, what can anyone do about it? It's not like North Korea is going to nicely exchange insurance info with the aggrieved party or pay for damages. Hell, if it's a US company I doubt they'd even be allowed to accept funds from there legally if they were amenable. I could see several scenarios in which this leads to war with North Korea, and frankly I'm not really caring who takes them out at this point. - HEX

Depends what it hits.
Recall the fun the US had with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_IV [wikipedia.org]
Finding out your telco are not really a network with some redundancy, more one point of profit vs risk.
A US weather satellite? Lets hope some smart people can list what kind of sats are near the same zone.
The US will always fund the funding for a spy sat, no need to worry about that.
Unique telco, science could be a real issue if anywhere in the same region????

Okay, look. North Korea are not the world's nicest people from what we know, either to their southern neighbour or (far more commonly) their own people. Let's just get that out of the way right now.

But seriously. Seriously. "Takes them out"? A Korea War II would be extremely costly for the western world and over what? A satellite that, worst case, smashes into one of the US Military's satellites (say a GPS one, not one so secret they'd just go "WHAT SATELLITE, IT WAS A TRAINING EXERCISE"). Then the debris takes out a few other satellites, and the GPS network takes a hit, being down for a week or so.

That's in my mind the absolute worst case scenario, and it would be pretty bad. We use GPS for everything; the airlines would take a hit, the road toll would go up, some smart missiles and bombs would stop working.

And you want to fucking bomb them for this? It's clearly just an accident. Sure, criminal ineptitude possibly, but that's what sanctions are for.

There's no reason anyone should die over this even in the absolute worst case. Stop crying for war as your country plummets over the fiscal cliff of economic crisis. And, of course, you sound so confident you can win (protip: You didn't win last time).

Are you fucking insane? Or one of those hardcore American evangelical Christians whose line of thought goes:

God blesses America to do whatever the fuck we want. Skirmishes? Bah, bomb those Athe-commies back to nothing. It escalates to total war? It's Christians vs Atheistic Commies! God will bless us with victory. It escalates to nuclear war? Praise God, the end times are upon us! The rapture is here!

Besides, if anything, the US govt should apologize because after all they DID use the rocket to send a satellite into orbit. That kind of mission takes years of planning. Sure, North Korea is not hip or gingham, and their economy is a reflection of centralized planning, but as a whole, very few countries in the world can manage to pull stuff like this. So in my mind, those Koreans, either from the South or the North, are kick-ass. Best Warcraft and Starcraft players, extremely good capitalists in the south

The GPS satellites have altitude well in excess of 20.000km, so for a North Korean ballistic missile launched satellite with an orbit at just around 500km to hit them would make for some big news indeed. That problem aside, you should probably know the GPS satellites are not something you go pick up at a nearby hardware store - they have a lead-time of years, decades if you count slipping them in to the budget somewhere and generally mucking around.

While at any given time there are a few irds hold on spare, should a significant number (enough for GS network to take a hit) of them be lost due to a runaway Kessler syndrome or repeat Carrington event, it would be far longer than few weeks to recover the situation. Indeed, the big worry people are hinting at is a Kessler syndrome, where our satellites decide to play a big game of billiards at orbital velocity in the sky. Not only would in theory ALL currently orbiting satellites be lost, but the debris would prevent ANY space-launches for centuries to come.

The ISS, by the way, is below 410km so quite far below the North Korean satellite for now, though the satellite's orbit is sure to decay in the future. Luckily ISS presents fairly small footprint for collissions, in the big scheme, but countless other satellites and debris lay below the satellite's current orbit. It's not good, but it's probably not catastrohic considering how frequently some satellite or other malfunctions. Our near orbit has grown so crowded however that satellites have for long been de-orbited or moved to safe orbits when taken out of service (Like that Russian satellite that was simply de-orbited rather than re-purposed because it might've received more than its alloted dose of radiation in the Van Allen belts and was therefore a risk).

Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.

"Troops home by Christmas" was the talk during WW I, "a shadow of the Great War" was the talk during WW II, "a bunch of fishermen in mud huts" was Korea (familiar?) and Vietnam. "Kill Osama, get out" was Afghanistan and "Get Sadam, freedom will rise" was Iraq.

If you think a conflict with North Korea would be "short" you're not looking beyond the big picture.

Not counting the usual border "exchanges", a war with North Korea is extremely unlikely unless NK accidentally or deliberately launches an actual nuclear warhead. China and Russia wouldn't want a war so close to home because conflict leads to chaos, what with refugees, disruption of supply routes, and even the possibility of local dissidents taking advantage of the situation.

Okay, so now you have an impoverished third world country where the single biggest employer, the military, has been utterly destroyed, full of fanatically loyal people who hate you and will do everything to kill you even at the expense of their own lives.

Sure you'll end up with a huge mess.

However, I wonder how loyal the North Koreans really are to their leaders. They are forced to be loyal: people that didn't cry hard enough over the late leader's death were punished, harshly. Not being loyal is not an option. And they don't know better with the total lack of any access to independent information, all information is controlled by the state.

Saddam Hussein had a huge standing army, loyal to him. However when the US invaded Iraq, that army disappeared almost

it's not a matter of bombing the party HQ, and driving into Pyong Jang, the invaders would not be accepted, and the people would gladly give their lives.

This is basically what was expected in Japan after WW2 based on what was happening in the final weeks of the war. In reality, it was one of the most peaceful occupations the world has ever seen. I don't think you can predict that easily how an oppressed and starving population will react to occupation.

But we could accidentally hit during a test of our anti-satellite rockets...

"On the morning of Thursday December 13 and 4am, a test of our SM-3 missile defense system tumbled out of control right into the ballistic path of the recently launched North Korean satellite. We would like to extend out sincerest apologies to the North Korean government."

In the original space race, when the Soviets launched a satellite, it was seen in the west as a proxy for an ICBM - the (correct) theory being, that a nation firing a sub-orbital rocket was "interesting", while a nation launching an orbital craft meant they could, potentially, hit "anywhere" (subject to orbital inclination and other similar factors)

Now that the Soviet Union has fallen, to be replaced by "friendly" (yeah, right) Russia, other nations can launch satellites with impunity (China, India etc). Most of them are, if not "friendly" to the west, are at least "not complete and utter fruitbats" (that's a technical term BTW).

North Korea (DPRK), though, is still transitioning from the "complete and utter fruitbat" of Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un, so that, at this stage, it is hard to say whether the new Dear Leader's plans for satellites are peaceful or not.

Assumption 1: it is peaceful, so an out of control satellite is, as USA, Russia and several others have found out, merely an expensive mistakeAssumption 2: it is deliberately provocative, (we launch a satellite, so an ICBM is easier), so an out of control satellite is... well what, exactly?

Let's not forget that part of DPRK's posturing is directed inwards - their recent "nuclear accident" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanggang_explosion) - to quote wiki "No neighboring nations have claimed any detection of radioactive isotopes characteristic of a nuclear explosion.", even though their news media hinted it as such, means that even an unsuccessful satellite will still be seen as a "we are a major power" - when broadcast to those in DPRK

So... where from here? DPRK joins the space race. That is still a concern. Does it matter that the satellite failed? Only if it was intended to be "just a satellite" If it was a "proof of concept" for an ICBM, then a wonky orbit is still an orbit

Whatever it is, it's not a weather satellite. Those are put into geosynchronous or geostationary orbits (west to east with slight inclination or directly over the equator with zero inclination), so they'll have the same view of the Earth all the time. e.g. If India launches a weather satellite, they want it hanging over India 24/7 so, y'know, it'll show them pictures of the weather over India all the time. Because geosynchronous orbits are so much higher (42,000 km), they require a lot more energy than low earth orbit (150-300 km).

The North Korean satellite is in a polar orbit (north to south). You only put stuff into those highly inclined orbits if you want to maximize coverage of the Earth's surface - typically a spy satellite, though NASA's Landsat satellites are also in highly inclined orbits. The loiter time over any one spot on Earth is short, typically with a ~24 hour gap between flyovers (the Earth rotates underneath a stable orbit). Meaning without a communications satellite network or an array of receiving stations spanning the globe, you're only in communications with the satellite for a few minutes every 24 hours. But you do get coverage of the entire globe. Unless something went wildly wrong with the launch, this orbit was intentional since the spent stages fell towards the south-southwest. Most countries' early launches are to the east since you get free energy from the Earth's rotation if you launch in that direction.

Whatever it is, it's not a weather satellite. Those are put into geosynchronous or geostationary orbits (west to east with slight inclination or directly over the equator with zero inclination), so they'll have the same view of the Earth all the time. e.g. If India launches a weather satellite, they want it hanging over India 24/7 so, y'know, it'll show them pictures of the weather over India all the time. Because geosynchronous orbits are so much higher (42,000 km), they require a lot more energy than low earth orbit (150-300 km).

Actually, no. Much of the weather observations are done from polar orbiting satellites in low orbit. This allows them to have a much more detailed view of the earth and its weather systems then if you're geo-stationary. To put it in perspective, from geo-synchronous orbit, the earth is a sphere about 17 degrees wide. This is roughly the size of a basketball held out at arm's length. Sure you can see large scale weather patterns (Hurricanes and so forth) but it doesn't tell you about much about local conditions. This is where NOAA's POES satellites, as well as the ones from other nations are intended for. They are put into exactly the same type of sun-synchronous orbit as the NK launch.

All right, calling the rocket launch a "weapon test" was not totally uncalled for, because we all know that space rocket technology is dual use by nature, and can result in the development of ballistic missiles.
But this...
The satellite is just a small spacecraft on a polar low earth orbit. It seems its attitude control system has failed, this is why it tumbles around. It's not the first example of a failed satellite on low earth orbit... and it's not because it is tumbling that its trajectory has become unpredictable. It will just decay in the atmosphere and burn before reaching the ground, as most low earth orbit satellites do at the end of their life. Controlled re-entries are rare, except for massive objects such as the Mir space station.

The satellite appears to be in a stable, nearly circular orbit. [n2yo.com] Perigee 505.3 km, apogee: 588.3 km. That's higher than the ISS. It's not going to re-enter any time soon. Good launch. Some idiot seems to have looked at a tracking site, saw that the altitude was decreasing, which happens for about half of each orbit, and made a big deal out of this.

It's not clear that the satellite is out of control. Many satellites tumble during their early orbits, until attitude stabilization is commanded and achieved. Since North Korea doesn't have a worldwide network of tracking stations, they can only send commands when the satellite passes over their country. They may choose to let it orbit for a while and collect some telemetry data before trying to stabilize it. Assuming it's equipped for attitude stabilization. Early US and USSR satellites were not stabilized.

Maybe it's time for the nations of the world to pony up the cash and send a "hoover vacuum" satellite to clean up the loose debris. They should also send a cat satellite that would be terrified of the other satellite. Of course, some know it all would point out that space is already a vacuum.

No need. Dark Helmet is on his way right now to suck our atmosphere up. We can just have him clean up the debris in orbit while he's at it.